The weirdest thing about my typing is I do it with two fingers. I use my pointing fingers, with left thumb on space bar… and aside from using other fingers on the arrow keys and numeric keypad, that's it. I figure if I had learned home row, I might be faster. Maybe even another speed boost with Dvorak. But I speculate, and due to some inherent stubbornness, I may never know.
What I do know is most people who type with two fingers are called hunt-and-peckers. I rejected that term long ago, in favor of "hunt-and-seek" for my velocity. In keyboarding class in high school, I was made to be a team unto myself in typing competitions because it simply wasn't fair to be on anyone else's. That felt kind of lonely, yet special at the same time.
I've used various typing tutor programs over the years, and watched my WPM increase by +10/year until it stabilized at 110. And today, I heard of TypeRacer from Vint Falken, and it brings back good memories.
What's my point here? You may have an unorthodox or outright bizarre way of doing some things. Despite social pressure, if you're getting excellent results, stick with it and keep growing.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Hey, I found a typing twin! WOoooottttt! Thanks Torley, finally I am vindicated. I have been typing with my two pointing fingers for years, using my thumbs in the same way. It has just been the way it has worked for me, and I think I am pretty damn fast with it too. Same with my mobile phone typing. I just hate the word predicting software on those things because I honestly think it slows me down major, so I leave mine off, much to the frustrations of my wife who can't live without it
Hey, we should challenge whole hand typers to a chat dual in SL one day
Lets see how those extra fingers really do against our amazing pointing finger type technique or the PFT technique! Any layman full hand typer up for a challenge?
I use hunt-and-whatever as well. Since a lot of my typing is programming, it is more is it correct than is it typed fast anyways.
Back when I was a teenager I get sent to a typing class. The teacher was really impressed with my speed and accuracy. Then she walked over and saw I was buffering large chunks of copy in my short term memory then looking at the keyboard.
Of course, she blew up. I always found it hilarious that I was doing much better than everyone else but all that was completely invalidated in her eyes by my not using the "right" (and demonstrably slower/less accurate) method.
Ohhh… you're good. No photoshop on that scoreboard?!
I assume that the more you do something the better you get at it, and seeing the average time most people spend behind their pc's nowadays. I do notice that I only get that speed when copying a text, or typing 'casual' conversation or 'casual' comment on blogposts. The moment you really start thinking about what and how you're writing something, the typing speed slows down. - Probably because my thinking on more elaborate stuff can't reach 120 words/minute? auwch! 
I do remember those times when I was first starting to type, and I would first think of a sentence to type and then type it out. Think of sentence, type it out… *grins* At least thinking and typing works simultaneously now!
I used to work with someone who averaged about 65wpm doing hunt and peck. It definitely was peck with her, her elbows would be sticking out at her sides, and she always looked like she was attacking the keyboard.
Really impressed me was when I realized she wasn't looking at the keyboard when she typed.
This reminds me of something interesting I learned about muscle memory back in the dark ages oh my high school days. Back then, I used to program in too different programming languages: BASIC at home on my Commodore 64, and Pascal at school on their Apple IIs (ah, those were the days). Anyway, I ended up switching at one point: coding in Pascal at home and BASIC at school. I found I was making a number of very strange typing errors all the sudden. Eventually I realized that I making mistakes because the two computers had different keyboard layouts, and I was associating different keyboard layouts with different programming languages. So, if I wanted to type a double quote in BASIC, I'd make one move; but if I wanted to type the same quote in Pascal, I'd make a different one. Eventually, I re-adjusted and everything was fine. This was also the moment where I realized that I had gone from real hunt-and-peck (as in, I had to look at the keyboard) to something sort of like traditional touch typing without really trying.
@Dumisani: Good to know you are two-fingered typist too! I haven't done much tapping around on mobile devices but I know some people who're amazingly fast texters on those non-QWERTY devices. My limited experiences with word-predicting software were dismal.
In Second Life, I'd like to see more ways to synchronize events without such noticeable latency: even with TypeRacer, I had occasional pauses. A competitive atmosphere, even a friendly one, shouldn't have such distractions.
@Kara: Ah yes, the limits of established pedagogy and the fallacy of "following the norm" despite your results. The key thing for me is, no matter what path was taken (within reasonable limits, e.g., you didn't sell your soul to Shoggoth to gain amazing typing skillz :p), if the end is good, then yes, the means are well too.
@Vint: Thanx for the pointer to this fun game. I had to play it despite brief stutters, but it flowed out after awhile. Some of the quotes they threw at me were pretty weird. I find I have to mentally train myself to leap past overthink/analysis so the words flow out more. I can definitely relate to what you said about "really start thinking" and "slows down". Sometimes I sit and think quietly, then start typing, and words come out in the *spirit* of what I intended, but not literally/exactly so.
@Storm: Hahaha! What a vivid visual! ELBOW-STYLE… it's like typistry martial arts.
@Loraaan: I did some BASIC on my C64 and Logo on Apple ][. My gosh, the dear memories you've brought back! It was a particularly big change for me to go from quotation marks on the "2" key on C64, to the current standard of where it's placed on PC/Mac keyboards today. I'm happy to hear it sounds like you had a smooth transition.